


She found us just in time

by Splatx



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Fix-It, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Time Travel Fix-It, Undecided Relationship(s), lots of horses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:47:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28385751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splatx/pseuds/Splatx
Summary: When she woke up in New Hanover, she didn’t go looking for the Van Der Linde Gang.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	She found us just in time

###  _She found [me] just in time,  
_ ~Jackie and Wilson, Hozier

###  _A fate that befell me  
_ ~Dinner & Diatrabes, Hozier

When she woke up in New Hanover, she didn’t go hunting down the Van Der Linde Gang.

She, after all, didn’t know how to handle a gun. How to ride a horse faster than a walk. How to act, how to talk, how to even feed herself. And she didn’t know where they were besides - it was 1895, and they could have been anywhere.

So she walked until she found a signpost, then hitched a ride to Valentine.

  
  


She managed to pick up small jobs - running supplies between the stores and to houses, carrying messages between buildings. Helped stock items in the grocery store when he needed a hand - though often she rather thought he was pitying her and hired her on more than he truly needed the help. She mimicked people until she could pass reasonably and not look _too_ out of place though still people seemed to eye her strangely, and got one of the stable hands to teach her to ride using the money she didn’t spend on food and a bed at the hotel.

A trapper that passed through seemed to get a kick out of teaching her to handle herself with a rifle, but she wasn’t complaining.

  
  


She made a plan.

First, she waited until she was sure she could reasonably handle her own.

Then, she waited until no one was looking, and casually nabbed a horse from in front of the saloon. It belonged to a sour faced drunk bastard, so she didn’t feel too bad. It was a passable horse - a Walker, if she remembered right, a dime a dozen brown colored thing that wouldn’t be easily recognized - and had gone with her easily as she swung up into its saddle and trotted off.

She wanted to be able to go back to Valentine though, and if she vanished at the same time the man’s horse did it wouldn’t be hard to put two and two together. So she stashed the horse in a nearby shack - it was eerie, she had to admit, knowing that it would belong to a serial killer in only a handful of years - and went back to work, pretended to be alarmed at such a brazen horse theft though she, and most folk, wasn’t too sorry for it. The man hadn’t done much to curry any favor, after all.

  
  


A few days later, she hopped in the mare’s saddle, and headed out.

With the horse, she filled her pockets. It wasn’t a great horse, but it got her here and there. She carried messages for the post offices, wandered from town to town and picked up jobs, even used her to help herd animals on the way to market once or twice when some ranchers or farmers were particularly hard up for extra hands.

She forked out the money to buy a better horse - a Thoroughbred she named Tracy. She wasn’t much better than the Walker in most things but she was quick, and got her from point A to point B much faster and so she was able to pick up more work. And different work, too - as she grew better with her guns, she took up bounty work, and having a quick horse meant that hunting was much easier.

Money spent on a Shire, and she was able to haul more than ever - she and the Trapper that traveled around quickly grew to a first name basis.

  
  


And then she returned her first mare to her previous owner. She’d always intended to - she was no thief, after all - but having a horse, and then hors _es,_ of her own had taught her exactly why horse theft was a capital crime.

  
  


She met a woman by the name of Madam Nazar, and though the woman wasn’t around long, left the states she wandered through often, she was able to earn a decent amount of money working under her. Enough to buy a plot of land, cheap on account of it fertile for only grass, and barely even that. There was no house on it, and for quite a while she slept on a bedroll with her horses by her side with a campfire to light the night, but after a time - and the purchase of a pair of Criollos that she leant out to one Bonnie MacFarlane (and no, she did _not_ have to fight down the urge to fangirl, not at all) for a decent sum, she was able to have a small stable built, and didn’t feel as sorry when she took in a Nokota that reminded her so much of the one she’d had towards the end of her game that she gave her the same name, able to stash her spare horses in the stable under borrowed farmhands care.

And from there, it progressed naturally.

She lived in her tent for a time, but it didn’t seem fair to the farmhands to make them sleep in tents when the horses had a stable, so she put money aside every time she earned some and finally had a small bunk house built for them, still away from the small homestead more often than not so she didn’t see the point in making a house for herself.

She found herself with more horses than she knew what to do with, but she didn’t regret it. Bought horses that stole her heart, tamed ones that she hadn’t been able to turn away from. Though she was no thief - refused to be one, especially after knowing how vital a horse was to life back then - a few of her horses had been ‘reappropriated’ from owners that hadn’t treated them well, including a man who’d tried to shoot a horse he’d bought just to beat her in a race.

Over time, she had more stables built - round pens and barns, paddocks and turn outs and all sorts of things, getting advice from Missus Bonnie MacFarlane herself, bless her, filled with her beloved horses - and eventually they were bringing in money, used as lesson horses to teach the nearby horse illiterate or lent out to people she knew treated horses well and sent out to stud.

  
  


Eventually, she found herself spending more time at the ranch. Still she took the horses out on mail runs, and went hunting, bringing the draft horses along to haul wagons full of carcasses, but most of her time was spent tending to the beasts. So she had a house built, and finally her plan was seen through.

She had money and a way to earn it, and a home, and people she cared for and who cared for her.

  
  


When she found Micah Bell trying to make off with some of her horses in winter of eighteen-ninety-eight, she put a bullet between his eyes, and wasn’t sorry for it.


End file.
